Abstract: Guerrilla Girls records document the activities of the feminist art group, comprising a complete set of posters, mass mailings,
form letters, and other graphic materials, along with internal group memoranda, letters from fans, business correspondence,
and audiovisual materials.

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Language: Collection material is in
English

Biographical/Historical Note

The Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985 as an anonymous group determined to fight sexism in the art world. Their initial strategy
was to put up protest posters during the night in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan. What residents saw in the morning were
statistics printed in black on white paper, and the numbers spoke for themselves: that only one woman had had a solo exhibition
in a New York Museum in the previous year; that fewer than 10% of artists shown in top galleries were women; that art magazines
devoted less than 25% of coverage to women artists. Confronting the art world with its patent injustice, the posters caused
a sensation.

The Guerrilla Girls developed their expose over the next two decades, systematically attacking the arbiters of taste in the
art world, including gallerists, critics, curators, collectors, editors, and even prominent male artists who failed to support
their campaign. To the stark presentation of fact they added wit, using, for example, the format of an elementary school report
card to grade and comment on the galleries' performance with regard to women artists, or listing the disadvantages of being
a woman artist as advantages. It was frequently this mock reversal of values that was at the core of their effective humor,
even when they moved into the broader political arena to target the Bush-era censorship campaigns, with messages such as,
"Relax, Senator Helms, the art world
is your kind of place."

The Guerrilla Girls have given lectures and performances dressed as gorillas to pursue the pun on their name, conceal their
identities, and emphasize the primal intelligence and strength of their political position. Instead of using their given names,
they took the names of women artists from the past as pseudonyms. They have also curated two major exhibitions. In 1985, their
Palladium show exhibited women artists. In 1987, in protest against the Whitney Biennial's selection of artwork, they curated
a counter exhibition,
Guerrilla Girls Review the Whitney, in which they revealed the corporate ties of the institution. Over the years, they have also produced mass mailings that
attacked reviewers or gallerists with more specificity than a poster allowed; books, including
Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls (1995) and
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art (1998); the journal
Hot Flashes (1990); and various toys, cards, banners, and other ephemera, often derived from the poster concepts.

Administrative Information

Access

Open for use by qualified researchers except for Box 96 Redactions which is restricted and sealed.

Initial processing by Vladimira Stefura in 2008. Further processing and cataloging by Annette Leddy in 2009. Redaction and
conservation by Jan Bender. Object conservation by Albrecht Gumlich. Arrangement is based on the Guerrilla Girls' original
filing system for their poster projects. Every effort has been made to redact the names of individual artist members of the
group, unless they gave permission to reveal their names.

Guerrilla Girls records document the activities of the feminist art group, comprising a complete set of posters, mass mailings,
form letters, and other graphic materials, showing the evolution of their work and their notable expansion of focus from the
art world to George Bush-era politics to New York theater. Series I documents their notorious posters in chronological order.
Series II. Assorted graphic works, shows their assiduous pursuit of justice through mass and individual mailings about and
to various art world figures, along with the private replies they often received. This series also provides a glimpse into
their collective compositional process, with drafts of posters and comments on them, along with source material in the form
of clippings and statistical reports. Series III concerns books and serials they created.

Series IV. Photographs, V. Exhibitions, and VI. Lectures and Performances, document the Guerrilla Girls' non-graphic activity,
though the extensive list of venues is not complete. Of particular interest is Series VIII. Administration files, which includes
internal group memoranda, revealing the sometimes emotional conflicts between members, and the challenges of non-hierarchical
collective self-management. Also included are letters from fans, business correspondence that offers insight into donors and
sponsors, and comprehensive press clippings.